5 ms·

Isn't the whole point of STEM to better the human experience? Without the liberal arts, I would argue there wouldn't be much of a human experience.

mattgreenrocks 15y ago
Without the humanities, I'm not a big fan of the human experience. And I say that as someone who quite enjoys STEM. There's a lifetime of wonderful experience to be had outside of STEM.
- possibilistic 15y ago
  My argument is that we have a surplus of humanities majors and the funding for them is disproportional to our basic need to advance scientific knowledge. Additionally, we must remain competitive with other countries that realize that STEM is the way to economic dominance. The humanities are subjects that can be explored at home by anyone who has the luxury of free time. While I admit that a hand-holding professor can help you traverse the field quicker and lead you to insight that would be difficult to divine on your own, there are books and audio lectures that can do the same job. And what's stopping anyone from joining a mailing list on the topic of interest? Even "big" art projects pale in comparison to the funding requirements of basic science research. We need to make sure every lab is fully-stocked with not only minds, but the latest equipment necessary to keep pace with the advancements being made at the top institutions.
tryitnow 15y ago
The commenter did not say kill the liberal arts, he said to stop funding them. Many of the best thinkers and artists I know are self taught. Liberal arts costs a lot less to learn and teach than most STEN subjects. Liberal arts should be clearly defined as a leisure activity, one that everyone has a right to, but not something that we should subsidize at the expense of advances in human health. You can enjoy the liberal arts if you're dead. It's just a matter of priorities.
- _delirium 15y ago
  The fact that it's so much cheaper to teach the liberal arts, yet the same tuition is charged, means that they are already much less subsidized. If you work out tuition paid by students and compare it to department salaries/expenses, humanities departments often turn a net profit for their universities (http://campuscomments.wordpress.com/2010/03/25/ah-bartleby-ah-humanities/ http://campuscomments.wordpress.com/2010/03/25/ah-bartleby-a...). If you charged students proportionally to the amount it cost to educate them for every credit-hour (i.e. equal subsidies across fields), STEM tuitions would be 20% to 50% higher. On the other hand, I don't see much reason to subsidize medical education or research across the board, given the huge profits in it; income from patent royalties ought to be sufficient to pay for most of the needed research and education. An exception is harder-to-monetize research, like running clinical trials for old generic medications where it's not profitable for the private sector to do so (since they wouldn't be able to patent the result), or studying diseases that primarily affect poor countries.

mattgreenrocks 15y ago

Without the humanities, I'm not a big fan of the human experience. And I say that as someone who quite enjoys STEM. There's a lifetime of wonderful experience to be had outside of STEM.

possibilistic 15y ago
My argument is that we have a surplus of humanities majors and the funding for them is disproportional to our basic need to advance scientific knowledge. Additionally, we must remain competitive with other countries that realize that STEM is the way to economic dominance. The humanities are subjects that can be explored at home by anyone who has the luxury of free time. While I admit that a hand-holding professor can help you traverse the field quicker and lead you to insight that would be difficult to divine on your own, there are books and audio lectures that can do the same job. And what's stopping anyone from joining a mailing list on the topic of interest? Even "big" art projects pale in comparison to the funding requirements of basic science research. We need to make sure every lab is fully-stocked with not only minds, but the latest equipment necessary to keep pace with the advancements being made at the top institutions.

tryitnow 15y ago

The commenter did not say kill the liberal arts, he said to stop funding them. Many of the best thinkers and artists I know are self taught. Liberal arts costs a lot less to learn and teach than most STEN subjects. Liberal arts should be clearly defined as a leisure activity, one that everyone has a right to, but not something that we should subsidize at the expense of advances in human health. You can enjoy the liberal arts if you're dead. It's just a matter of priorities.

_delirium 15y ago
The fact that it's so much cheaper to teach the liberal arts, yet the same tuition is charged, means that they are already much less subsidized. If you work out tuition paid by students and compare it to department salaries/expenses, humanities departments often turn a net profit for their universities (http://campuscomments.wordpress.com/2010/03/25/ah-bartleby-ah-humanities/ http://campuscomments.wordpress.com/2010/03/25/ah-bartleby-a...). If you charged students proportionally to the amount it cost to educate them for every credit-hour (i.e. equal subsidies across fields), STEM tuitions would be 20% to 50% higher. On the other hand, I don't see much reason to subsidize medical education or research across the board, given the huge profits in it; income from patent royalties ought to be sufficient to pay for most of the needed research and education. An exception is harder-to-monetize research, like running clinical trials for old generic medications where it's not profitable for the private sector to do so (since they wouldn't be able to patent the result), or studying diseases that primarily affect poor countries.